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Rice University ecologists are checking to see if Hurricane Harvey's unprecedented floods gave a competitive boost to fire ants and crazy ants, two of southeast Texas' least favorite uninvited guests.

Koalas are one of Australia's iconic animals, but they have been hard hit by an epidemic of Chlamydia infections contributing to a steep decline in numbers. Sick koalas brought to wildlife hospitals may be treated with antibiotics to clear up the chlamydia, but the antibiotics themselves can have severe side effects in the animals.

Anyone who has witnessed majestic whales or lumbering elephant seals in person would be forgiven for associating ocean life with unlimited size in mammals, but new research reveals that mammal growth is actually more constrained in water than on land.

Ninety percent of the world's coastal freshwater turtle species are expected to be affected by sea level rise by 2100, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

The availability of livestock as a food source for vampire bats influences their immune response and infection by bacterial pathogens, according to a new paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Because cattle ranching is common in areas where the bats live, the findings have implications for human as well as animal health.

And then there were... 44. Eight bison -- four calves and their mothers -- were released in mid-March on public lands in northern Colorado, bringing the total number of animals in the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd to 44.